It was May
and I was drunk
and I was sitting on a rock somewhere far away from my mind
and my heart and all those other things that you need to survive.
I was thinking about the ocean
and time
and how much my feet hurt.
You see,
I had walked all the way out there
to look at the waves and lost my shoes
along with my mind and my heart and
they’re probably swimming out there somewhere;
I’ve just lost sight of them.
The ocean is funny and sad
when you hold it in your hands your fingers can either feel like they own the world
or as if the world can, at any moment, slip through the cracks.
Time is funny too,
and like the ocean,
you can only hold a little in your hands.
In other ways it’s not like the ocean at all,
trying drinking Time and I’ll think you’re on some drug that I’d like to get my hands on.
People describe time and the ocean similarly
and for some reason I think I’ve got it figured out
but I’ve got it figured out in only the way someone sitting on a rock in the middle of the night with no shoes and heart can.
They describe the ocean and time by telling us about how enormous it is,
they try to tell us how deep it is,
how wide it is,
how tall it is.
They can stand up and tell us facts about the beginnings of it and how they think it will end but when you look at the fine print both of them say that they have about 90% left to be discovered.
When you look out at time or the ocean who is to say how much your seeing?
Is the the horizon over there or is it just how far my eyes will reach? Can I predict the tides and the sky and the next person to stumble around the corner?
Maybe I should just go to sleep.